Five poems by Donna Spruijt-Metz
Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, a psychology professor, and a recent MacDowell Fellow. Her first career was as a classical flutist. She also translates Dutch poetry to English. Her poetry and translations appear in Copper Nickel, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, the Tahoma Literary Review, the Inflectionist Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbooks are Slippery Surfaces (Finishing Line Press) and And Haunt the World (a collaboration with Flower Conroy, Ghost City Press). Camille Dungy (Orion Magazine) chose her forthcoming full length General Release from the Beginning of the World (January 2023, Free Verse Editions) as one of the 14 Recommended Poetry Collections for Winter 2022. Donna gets restless. Her website is https://www.donnasmetz.com/
Deluge
She sings: ‘Sometimes loneliness is the only rest we get.’[1]
and I believe it—we need so much
silence. Next in the song—
tambourines & I am dancing across
the kitchen—earbuds in—
Miriam the prophet
on the shore after we walked
through the sundered sea—& then the water
whooshed down—'covered the chariots
and the horsemen, the entire force
of Pharaoh’[2]—& we danced to Miriam’s
tambourine—& this was our call
to joy—& to mourning—because
‘when your enemy falls, do not rejoice.’[3]
This is the lesson:
death is death.
& here, in this life, now,
I brave my own sludge to wade back
to YOU—again
—when my friend succumbed
—when my father couldn’t
take the heat—when they couldn’t
make it across their days
—called it quits—
I said the blessings, tore
my clothes,
covered my mirrors—
but what am I to do
with this hobbled
heart—this betrayer—how she
bursts with survival
[1] From ‘Hold On’, a song from Adele’s album 30
[2] Exodus 14: 28
[3] Proverbs 24: 17
Aperture
—in the form of a WaltMarie
I am a storm, a body in
low-grade
inflammation, plummeting towards time,
longing
for YOU, smeared in dread, yet
sticky
with blessings. YOU, YOU formed me, the
fissures,
the openings and closings, the pain when it comes,
all blessed.
Sarah Returns to Me as a Hairdresser’s Fine Mist Spray Bottle Repurposed for Disinfecting Surfaces with Everclear
Omicron has shut us all down again—
again, we pry our tentacles from the lives
we had just begun to reclaim. My daughter
brings me groceries—and I find myself
spraying down the counters—again—with the
Hairdresser’s Fine Mist Spray Bottle. It’s the large one
you gave us along with the “travel” bottle—
for our trips to the desert—to disinfect
our VRBOs or Airbnbs—you wanted us to be
prepared for all contingencies—to be
“safe.” So today, to honor that wish, I spray
down the counters and thank you again—unsheathe
your absence like a blade. You thought the pandemic was
over—you thought you could leave us to it—but no. Where
can I file a complaint—spray it out
like fine mist—so that you—from the other side—will register
this—my most tender protest?
Sarah Returns to Me in the Form of a Ghazal
—after Psalm 104, verses 1-6
I read the verses—each slow to its soul.
I sit with locks and keys—tinkering this stone soul.
This light—merciful, cruel, concealing. Your ghost never leaves [1].
The darkness of it crosses the light of my eyes. What to do, my one lone soul?
I am building something. Not a scaffold. No—a roof of water. Fall through
and be carried—float the seas of our detriment, to the safety of a known soul.
Your ghost never leaves—bent angel, refracted—just
outside my line of vision— a signpost towards my moss-grown soul.
Creaky vision, precarious—persistent—in every corner of the house I might
meet you—if I don’t blunder past, in pointless hurry, trying to protect my blown soul.
And above us—water—above the mountains—water—it oscillates above us,
through us—my blood and your no-longer-blood can hymn here, sewn souls.
[1] ‘Your ghost never leaves” is from the song ‘Fire in my Hands’ by Iain Morrison
Sarah Returns to Me in the Form of Questions I Never Got to Ask My Father about Abandonment
Here you are as the photographer saw you that day [1]—gentle,
folded in upon yourself—a week or so after your first
hospitalization. You were just coming back to life.
Finally, a diagnosis, a label. And with it came
medication. Your life blurred. Your art atrophied.
You, bright and fragile, were caught
in the undertow. In time, you made your choice.
What transmutes life, finally, into something unbearable?
Dear ghost, what made the choice to step over seem—inevitable?
What were you feeling right before you kicked
away the chair? I imagine you doubted, at some point, paused in your careful planning—
but you didn’t—change your mind, that is—not finally.
What was my father feeling right before he began
swallowing his curated feast of pills and
powders? As he continued to swallow?
I imagine what you both might have felt—deluged, maybe—but it always comes back again
to this, to me, to her—to that child in me—asking, did he think of me?
Did you? Could I have, somehow, changed the course?
I light the candles, scry the flame—I consider it—but stop
at summoning your spirit—it seems unkind—to call you
back to this place that you could, perhaps,
no longer tolerate—even as you hover here.
Would I call you back, father? Summon you?
No. I imagine you all those years ago—your world
vibrating around you—slow, at first—but at some point
the vibrating became too much—too high pitched—
and you vortexed.
[1] Photography @ James Walker, used with permission